Dallas City Plan Commissioners vote down proposal for new zoning process for site of planned Cityplace Sam’s Club

Dallas City Plan Commissioners this afternoon voted down a proposal to open a new zoning process for the site of a controversial planned Sam’s Club at Cityplace.

That means the Sam’s Club is expected to go forward as planned — something that commissioners realized probably would have happened regardless of what they did today.

The vote came after commissioners heard from numerous area residents who said developer Trammell Crow Co. misled them or did not communicate plans to potentially develop a big box store. The Plan Commission and City Council last year approved zoning that will allow for the development, though residents who talked to the developers at that time now say they were told of plans for a mixed-use development that would likely include a grocery store.

“We were told that there would not be a big box store there,” said Carl Smith, president of the Belmont Park Neighborhood Association. “I feel that we’ve been misled.”

But commissioners said that even if they were to authorize a new zoning hearing for the site, the previously approved zoning would have stayed in place as the new process played out. That means the developers would likely have had enough time to proceed with their plans and build the store anyway.

Kirk Williams, an attorney representing Trammell Crow, said the company did nothing wrong last year and called the current opposition a “media spectacle.”

“There may have been a different result had these people shown up a year ago,” Williams said. “We’re into this property in the neighborhood of $100 million in either hard costs or committed contracts in order to develop this property.”

Williams said they did originally hope to develop a grocery store, but that the zoning always clearly allowed them to develop a 100,000-square-foot retail store. The Sam’s Club is expected to open in the first quarter of 2016.

Opponents pledged to return to City Hall on July 10, when the Sam’s Club development plan will be up for a vote before the Plan Commission. Commissioners are expected to approve the development plan, as long as it complies with the zoning for the site.

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